The theme of the 2013 PER conference was “From Fearing Physics to Having Fun with Physics: Exploring the Affective Domain of Physics Learning from Multiple Perspectives.” The theme of the 2013 Physics Education Research Conference was “From Fearing Physics to
Having Fun with Physics: Exploring the Affective Domain of Physics Learning from Multiple
Perspectives.” This conference highlighted research across physics, cognitive science and
mathematics education that demonstrated the role of affect in science education. The conference
brought together roughly 276 participants who participated in talks, poster sessions, workshops,
and round table discussions.
In addition to the papers by presenters in the invited sessions, many contributed papers in this
volume also address this year’s theme. The remainder of the papers represent the diversity of
directions within PER and help this volume fulfill its purpose of providing an annual snapshot of
the field.

Many students are disempowered in physics classes finding them to be more difficult, unpleasant, narrow, and masculine when compared to other subjects. Such disempowerment can lead students to limit their engagement. This study explores how physics teachers can help students engage with the material and develop their physics identities by obscuring traditional classroom hierarchies. Employing a positionality lens on case studies of four high school physics teachers, we coded teachers’ behavioral cues that contributed to the relational structure in the classroom. Our findings suggest that teachers’ physical cues (space and hierarchical stance occupied), structural cues (dynamic nature of the classroom allowing alternating roles), contextual cues (including students’ thoughts and experiences), and social cues (obscuring traditional boundaries between teacher and student) affect the social distance between the teacher, students, and content. This social distance can moderate students’ level of engagement and ultimately their physics identity development.

Principles of learning and performance derived from research in cognitive science can inform how physics is taught and how learning is assessed. At the same time, common practices in physics education can be used to develop better cognitive principles of student learning and understanding. This paper has two main themes. First, we discuss how we can use psychology and neuroscience research regarding how academic anxiety alters thinking and reasoning to help students perform at their best – especially on important tests. Second, we explore how basic principles of learning can be used to develop optimal labs in physics education settings. Finally, we end by discussing how, together, PER and cognitive science can be used to help students perform at their best when it matters most.

Research has shown that student input and autonomy are positively correlated to motivation and agency. This study investigates the effect of student input on classroom procedures on homework completion rate. Two different classroom treatments were applied to two classes over the same term in an urban high school chemistry course. The first treatment involved eliciting student ideas regarding classroom structures surrounding homework that theoretically would lead to a greater homework completion rate. The second treatment (or control) involved the traditional, authoritative structures that had been in place—student ideas were not elicited about homework and therefore the teacher decided all structures and routines regarding homework. Our results suggest that structures derived with student input led to greater homework completion rates and to higher performances on the district assessment over the teacher decided homework condition. These results and their implications are discussed.

Many prominent lines of research on students’ reasoning and conceptual change within learning sciences and physics education research have not attended to the role of learners' affect or emotions in the dynamics of their conceptual reasoning. This is despite evidence that emotions are deeply integrated with cognition and documented associations between emotions and academic performance. I present the case for research aimed at integrating emotions with models of learners' cognition. I present a case-study to argue that, in physics learning environments, learners' emotions can be intertwined with the unfolding conceptual and epistemological reasoning at fine time-scales. This case-study draws on video-taped interactions of a small group of students working on a physics tutorial. The analysis of the conceptual and epistemological substance of students’ talk and the associated emotions draws on a combination of methodologies from knowledge analysis, interaction analysis, and conversation analysis traditions. I end with implications for research and instruction.

Upper-division physics requires students to use abstract mathematical objects to model measurable properties of physical entities. We have developed activities that engage students in using their own bodies or simple home-built apparatus as metaphors for novel (to the students) types of mathematical objects. These tangible metaphors are chosen to be rich, robust, and flexible so that students can explore several properties of the mathematical objects over an extended period of time. The collaborative nature of the activities and inherent silliness of “dancing” out the behavior of currents or spin ½ states certainly increases the fun in the classroom and may also decrease students' fear of learning about these mathematical objects. We include examples from the electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics content in the Paradigms in Physics program at Oregon State University.

Drawing appropriate diagrams is a useful problem solving heuristic that can transform a problem into a representation that is easier to exploit for solving the problem. A major focus while helping introductory physics students learn problem solving is to help them appreciate that drawing diagrams facilitates problem solution. We conducted an investigation in which 118 students in an algebra-based introductory physics course were subjected to two different interventions during the problem solving in recitation quizzes throughout the semester. Here, we discuss the problem solving performance of students in different intervention groups for two problems involving standing waves in tubes, one which was given in a quiz and the other in a midterm exam. These problems can be solved using two different methods, one involving a diagrammatic representation and the other involving mostly mathematical manipulation of equations. In the quiz, students were either (1) asked to solve the problem in which a partial diagram was provided or (2) explicitly asked to draw a diagram. A comparison group was not given any instruction regarding diagrams. Students in group (1), who were given the partial diagram, could not use that partial diagram by itself to solve the problem. The partial diagram was simply intended as a hint for students to complete the diagram and follow the diagrammatic approach. However, we find an opposite effect, namely, that students given this diagram were less likely to draw productive diagrams and performed worse than students in the other groups. Moreover, we find that students who drew a productive diagram performed better than those who did not draw a productive diagram even if they primarily used a mathematical approach. Interviews with individual students who were asked to solve the problem provided further insight.

With inspiration from the classic study by Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser, we asked introductory physics students in three introductory physics classes to categorize mechanics problems based upon similarity of solutions. To evaluate the effect of problem context on students’ ability to categorize, two sets of problems were developed for categorization. Some problems in one of the problem sets that students were asked to categorize included those available from the prior study by Chi et al. Our findings, which contrast from those of Chi et al., suggest that there is a much wider distribution of expertise among introductory students.

Csíkszentmihályi proposed the psychological concept of flow as signifying a state of complete involvement and enjoyment in an activity. When learners are in flow they are motivated, engaged, and completely focused on the task at hand, resulting in effortful learning. In this paper we explore the connections between the concept of flow and our model of transfer of learning as applied to problem solving. Our model of transfer purports two cognitive mechanisms – horizontal and vertical – that learners use to construct knowledge. Further, it proposes that carefully designed sequences of horizontal and vertical learning which provide scaffolding within a learner’s zone of proximal development can facilitate learners to navigate an optimal adaptability corridor and foster progress toward adaptive expertise as characterized by Bransford & Schwartz. By exploring the connections between flow and our model of transfer, we hope to gain insights into what can motivate learners to become better problem solvers.

The complexity of thermodynamics challenges many students as well as faculty. Understanding what a partial derivative represents may be key to reducing the anxiety associated with this topic. In this session, participants engaged with a sequence of activities designed to elucidate the mathematics of thermodynamics through multiple representations of partial derivatives. Activities include: experiments that provide exemplars of measuring thermodynamic quantities involving partial derivatives, thought experiments where students design ways to measure particular partial derivatives representing thermodynamic quantities, a mechanical analogue that physically represents changes that hold specific quantities fixed, and an algebraic formulation of a partial derivative chain rule. Our discussants, Ayush Gupta and Joseph Wagner, each comment on how their different research perspectives can contribute to and are necessary for a holistic understanding of what happens during this kind of curricular sequence.

Very little is known about how the nature of expertise in introductory and advanced courses compares in knowledge-rich domains such as physics. We develop a framework to compare the similarities and differences between learning and patterns of student difficulties in introductory physics and quantum mechanics. Based upon our framework, we argue that the qualitative patterns of student reasoning difficulties in introductory physics bear a striking resemblance to those found for upper-level quantum mechanics. The framework can guide the design of teaching and learning tools.

As part of a larger research project into massively open online courses (MOOCs), we have investigated student background, as well as student participation in a physics MOOC with a laboratory component. Students completed a demographic survey and the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation at the beginning of the course. While the course was still actively running, we tracked student participation over the first five weeks of the eleven-week course.

Responsive teaching is the extent to which teachers attempt to understand students’ ideas and respond to those ideas in moment-to-moment interactions. We propose that responsiveness does not only apply to teacher-student interactions, but also to interactions among peers. We analyze a small group discussion in a professional development course for K-12 teachers about energy usefulness and identify responsive listening among peers. We observe that learners engage with each other’s ideas and further inquire about the reasoning behind those ideas. We claim that responsive listening among peers promotes productive disciplinary engagement which results in the refinement of their understanding about energy.

When education researchers describe newly developed curricular materials, they typically concentrate on the research base behind their design, and the efficacy of the final products, but do not highlight the initial stages of creating the actual materials. With the aim of providing useful information for faculty engaged in similar projects, we describe here our development of a set of in-class tutorials for advanced undergraduate electrodynamics students, and discuss factors that influenced their initial design and refinement. Among the obstacles to be overcome was the investigation of student difficulties within the short time frame of our project, and devising ways for students to engage in meaningful activities on advanced-level topics within a single 50-minute class period. We argue for a process that leverages faculty experience and classroom observations, and present several guidelines for tutorial development and implementation in upper-division physics classrooms.

After four years of research we designed a 20-item multiple choice vector concept test (Test of Understanding of Vectors, TUV). In this article we analyze: 1) the reliability and discriminatory power of the test, and 2) students’ understanding of the vector concepts evaluated in the test. The final version of the test was administered in English to 423 students who were finishing an Electricity and Magnetism course at a large private Mexican university. In the first part of the article, we show results indicating that the TUV is a reliable assessment tool. In the second part, we examine students’ overall performance on the test and analyze the results of the five most difficult items for students: geometric interpretation of dot product, calculation of dot product of two vectors written in unit-vector notation, graphic representation of a unit vector, calculation of the direction of a vector written in unit-vector notation, and graphical subtraction of vector in 2D.

This study explores the hypothesis that curricula designed to engage students in evidence-based inductive reasoning can equalize opportunities for linguistically diverse students. Specifically, we evaluated how English language learners and native English speakers performed on conceptual physics assessments and the extent to which they used models and evidence to justify claims and ideas. Results indicate that within this learning context, all students demonstrated conceptual learning gains as well as reliance on evidence and models to support their claims. Female English language learners, a group that has remained underrepresented in science, used evidence and models most frequently to support their claims, and these students demonstrated performance on end of course assessments of conceptual understanding that was comparable to university students. Male English language learners did not rely on evidence and models to the same extent. We discuss these differences and propose rationale for aspects of the learning environment that may have led to these findings.

This study explores both students’ ability to make valid inferences from data tables and the effect of students’ prior beliefs on that ability. Over 300 introductory physics students participated in one of two experimental conditions. In both conditions, the data filling the tables was identical; however, in the first condition, the tables were presented within a familiar physical context, a method well known to elicit incorrect prior beliefs in many students. In the second, the tables were presented in a generic context. We found that, while most students were able to draw valid conclusion from simple, generic data sets, they were significantly more likely to draw invalid conclusions in the familiar physical context. Closer analysis revealed that, when provided with a physical context, students tended to look at the data less, relying in part on their prior knowledge to draw their conclusions. Interestingly, students in the physical context condition indicated a higher confidence in their responses, despite their lower accuracy.

In the participationist perspective, learning is viewed in terms of how students transform their participation. However, many of the seminal papers discussing the participationist framework are vague on specific details about what student participation really looks like on a more fine-grained scale. As part of a larger project to understand the role of student participation in learning, we are trying to characterize the ways in which physics students participate in group activities and discussions while they are constructing new knowledge. The context for our study is a student-centered introductory calculus-based physics class structured around the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) philosophy. In this paper we will discuss some of the patterns of participation we have found and some of the challenges we have encountered in trying to code and quantify student participation from analyzing video data.

Reliable and validated assessments of introductory physics have been instrumental in driving curricular and pedagogical reforms that lead to improved student learning. As part of an effort to systematically improve our sophomore-level Classical Mechanics and Math Methods course (CM 1) at CU Boulder, we are developing a tool to assess student learning of CM 1 concepts in the upper-division. The Colorado Classical Mechanics/Math Methods Instrument (CCMI) builds on faculty-consensus learning goals and systematic observations of student difficulties. The result is a 9-question open-ended post-test that probes student learning in the first half of a two-semester classical mechanics / math methods sequence. In this paper, we describe the design and development of this instrument, its validation, and measurements made in classes at CU Boulder.

Instructors of reformed courses face many potential barriers to change. One possible barrier is students’ reactions to differences between reformed and traditional courses. We used an “expectancy violation” framework to explore students’ experiences in second semester calculus-based introductory physics courses, taught either in a traditional lecture and laboratory mode or in a studio mode that closely modeled SCALE-UP. In this pilot study, we adapted the Pedagogical Expectancy Violation Assessment (PEVA) to include questions about course satisfaction. At the end of the semester, students were asked to report on their initial expectations for the course and what they experienced in the course, as well as their satisfaction with specific experiences and the course overall. We investigated differences between the courses, as well as the effect of the format of students’ first semester introductory physics course, gender and race/ethnicity. Although preliminary, our results suggest that students in the SCALE-UP course experienced more expectancy violations and more frequently had a negative opinion about those expectancy violations. Our analysis also revealed differences between the types of questions that exhibited expectancy violations in each course and a difference in interpretation of the traditional course for students with prior experience in a SCALE-UP course.

The physics department at Texas State University is developing a Learning Assistant (LA) program with reform-based instructional changes in our introductory course sequences. We are interested in how participation in the LA program influences LAs’ identity both as physics students and as physics teachers; in particular, how being part of the LA community changes participants’ self-concepts and their day-to-day practice. We analyze written artifacts from program applications, reflections, and evaluations; our analysis of self-concepts is informed by the identity framework developed by Hazari and colleagues [1,2] and our analysis of practice is informed by Lave and Wenger’s theory of Communities of Practice [3,4]. Preliminary experience suggests that engagement in the collaborative physics education community elements of the LA program blurs the distinction between learner and teacher practice and increases LAs’ engagement in negotiation of meaning in both contexts.

Quantum states are traditionally cognitively managed exclusively with algebra rather than geometry. One reason for emphasizing algebra is the high dimensionality of quantum mathematical systems; even spin-1/2 systems require a 2-d complex number space for describing their quantum states, which can be hard to visualize. Using "nested phasor diagrams," which use nesting to increase the dimensionality of graphic space, we taught undergraduate students to represent spin-1/2 states graphically as well as algebraically. In oral exams, students were asked to identify which spin-1/2 states, expressed arithmetically, would generate the same set of probabilities as each other (i.e., they are the same except for a different overall phase factor). Video records of oral exams (N=13) show that no student performed this task successfully using an algebraic method; instead, all successful students solved the problem graphically. Furthermore, most students who were successful used a certain gesture to solve the problem.

The Learning Assistant (LA) program at Florida International University has become an important part of physics teacher preparation at the institution. All pre-service physics teachers are required to participate in the program. An underlying goal of the program is to help participants develop pedagogical content knowledge necessary for effective teaching. In this study, physics LAs views on expert teaching are analyzed through the lens of pedagogical content knowledge by means of semi-structured interviews. Analysis of these interviews reveals that LAs are aware of the need for both pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge in expert teaching. LAs hint at the need for pedagogical content knowledge in expert teaching. Analysis of participants’ responses also revealed that physics LAs’ have varying perspectives on the importance of content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge in expert teaching that impact their views on their teacher preparation experience.

After introducing several new elements into an introductory mechanics course for life science students, we observed a substantial reduction in the gender gap on the Force Concept Inventory (FCI). Among those students with the strongest scientific reasoning abilities, where previously the gender gap had been largest, the gender gap was completely eliminated. The course used the Thinking in Physics curriculum, an interactive engagement pedagogy aimed at developing general thinking and problem solving skills along with an understanding of physics. The new elements, designed to reduce stereotype threat and to improve the experience of female students, included giving students a self-affirmation writing exercise created by researchers at the University of Colorado, providing a learning guide, and assessing and interviewing students at the beginning of the course.

To examine the effect of extensive life science applications on student attitudes to learning physics, we analyzed CLASS data from life science students in introductory physics. We compare the same students’ responses from the first semester, taught with a standard syllabus, to the second semester, taught with extensive life science applications (IPLS). Although first semester responses become less favorable (pre to post), IPLS responses show an increase in favorable and a decrease in unfavorable responses. This is noteworthy because improvement is rarely observed without direct attention to attitudes/beliefs, and suggests IPLS courses are one possible approach to improving attitudes. Finally, we analyzed CLASS responses by gender, major, students’ stated goals in taking physics, and initial interest in physics; initial interest was determined from CLASS items chosen based on the Four-Phase Model of Interest Development. Most notably, we find that in the IPLS course, students identified as having low interest initially had the greatest gains.

Learners’ everyday ideas about energy often involve energy being “used up” or “wasted.” In physics, the concept of energy degradation can connect those ideas to the principle of energy conservation. Learners’ spontaneous discussions about aspects of energy degradation motivated us to introduce new learning goals into our K-12 teacher professional development courses. One of our goals is for learners to recognize that since energy degradation is associated with the movement of some quantity towards equilibrium, the identification of energy as degraded or free depends on the choice of the objects involved. Another goal is for learners to recognize that overall energy degradation occurs. We find that teachers’ discussions contain productive ideas about energy degradation that demonstrate progress towards our goals. These include (1) the idea that degraded energy can be made useful and (2) the idea that making energy useful requires either effort or energy relocation.

We surveyed past participants of the Physics and Astronomy New Faculty Workshop to learn more about their experiences. Survey questions were based on areas that emerged as salient from a longitudinal three year study of 15 workshop participants. Questions included: current practice, experiences with student resistance to reform, perceptions of available curricular and support resources, perceptions of local climate, and demographics of both faculty and their students. In this paper we report on an initial analysis of the survey data.

Coming to grips with the nature of measurement and uncertainty is often a common but implicit learning goal for many undergraduate physics labs. As educators, our intent is to have students be able to transfer their knowledge to novel situations: we aim to transform novices into experts. In the first-year physics laboratory at UBC, our approach to teaching weighted averages-among other concepts-involves the use of invention activities. These invention activities actively engage the students, are intended to stimulate creative thinking, are particular in their brevity and high level of structure, and are designed to precede both explicit instruction and reinforcing practice. The merit of having students inspect the fundamental makeup of a problem before being taught to solve it has been shown as useful support for the formation of an initial orderly schema (i.e., preparation for future learning). The transfer of knowledge can be rather difficult to detect in a sequestered problem solving environment, but we claim to have found some evidence of its occurrence. In a situation for which a weighted average is required, we observe significantly more students paying attention to the uncertainty associated with the problem. Given the well-documented challenges associated with teaching the nature of measurement and uncertainty—and while many students still fall short of remembering or applying the correct formula of a weighted average—we interpret this transfer of a concept as a small victory.

A lock-in amplifier is a versatile instrument frequently used in physics research. However, many students struggle with the basic operating principles of a lock-in amplifier which can lead to a variety of difficulties. To improve students' understanding, we have been developing and evaluating a research-based tutorial which makes use of a computer simulation of a lock-in amplifier. The tutorial is based on a field-tested approach in which students realize their difficulties after predicting the outcome of simulated experiments involving a lock-in amplifier and check their predictions using the simulated lock-in amplifier. Then, the tutorial guides and helps students develop a coherent understanding of the basics of a lock-in amplifier. The tutorial development involved interviews with physics faculty members and graduate students and iteration of many versions of the tutorial with professors and graduate students. The student difficulties and the development and assessment of the research-based tutorial are discussed.

Scientific reasoning is not a de-contextualized construct; instead, its development and deployment intimately relates to content learning. Drawing on this framework and driven by the instructional goals of many college-level courses that are aimed at both knowledge acquisition and skill development, this study investigates the extent to which undergraduate students’ scientific reasoning skills vary in relation to two aspects of content learning: quantity and domain. Students from different year levels (years 1-4) and two majors (science and engineering) were recruited to complete the Lawson Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning (LCTSR). These students represented respectively individuals exposed to different quantities and domains of content learning. Results show that, regardless of their major, student reasoning skills measured by the LCTSR remained largely constant across the four years of higher education, with no significant difference between science and engineering. These results call attention to the status quo of undergraduate education and have implications for future improvement.

Much recent work in physics education research has focused on ontological metaphors for energy, particularly the substance ontology and its pedagogical affordances. The concept of negative energy problematizes the substance ontology for energy, but in many instructional settings, the specific difficulties around negative energy are outweighed by the general advantages of the substance ontology. However, we claim that our interdisciplinary setting (a physics class that builds deep connections to biology and chemistry) leads to a different set of considerations and conclusions. In a course designed to draw interdisciplinary connections, the centrality of chemical bond energy in biology necessitates foregrounding negative energy from the beginning. We argue that the emphasis on negative energy requires a combination of substance and location ontologies. The location ontology enables energies both "above" and "below" zero. We present preliminary student data that illustrate difficulties in reasoning about negative energy, and the affordances of the location metaphor.

Computational thinking, an approach to problem solving, is a key practice of science education rarely integrated into instruction in an authentic way. A second key practice, creating models of physical phenomenon, has been recognized as an important strategy for facilitating students' deeper understandings of both science concepts and the practices of science. We are creating an interdisciplinary computational thinking curriculum for grades 4-6 that combines the development of computational thinking with content in other disciplines such as science. Here we present an example project where students can iteratively develop a model to explain the momentum and acceleration of an object, coupled with sophisticated computational thinking concepts to simulate that model. In addition, we present two findings from related research on fourth graders’ pre-instructional knowledge related to computational thinking: 1) Students recognized the need for but struggled to produce specific instructions, and 2) Students understood that small errors could change outcomes.

The Physics Education Group at the University of Washington is examining student understanding of blackbody radiation. Results from interviews and questions administered in sophomore and upper-division courses indicate that traditional instruction on blackbody radiation often does not help students apply the concepts and mathematical formalism to real-world objects. We are developing an online homework that approaches blackbody radiation from a phenomenological viewpoint, rather than from an idealized formalism. Initial use suggests that this homework helps students understand, for example, how the spectrum of an incandescent light bulb changes with temperature. Moreover, students who have worked through the homework also seem able to provide more robust answers during interviews than students who have not. However, we find that students continue to struggle with the concept of blackbody radiation. Additional research is needed to be able to design more effective instructional materials.

In recent years researchers have compared scientific reasoning abilities of students in introductory physics courses with gains in conceptual learning. This research suggests students with more formal reasoning patterns are more proficient learners. However, little has been done to investigate how scientific reasoning abilities relate to ability to solve problems based on the application of simple algorithms and those which depend on conceptual understanding. In this pilot study we compare student scientific reasoning abilities, as measured by Lawson's Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning, to student ability to correctly solve both problem types on a final examination. Results indicate that students with higher reasoning abilities perform equally well on both problem types while students of average and lower reasoning abilities struggle in solving problems that depend on conceptual understanding. This suggests that students with average and lower reasoning abilities may depend more readily on memorization of simple procedures to solve problems.

Transformative experience (TE) is a theoretical construct intended to capture the extent to which science concepts learned in the classroom shape students' everyday meaning-making and engagement with science outside the classroom. One tool available to assess the depth and prevalence of TE is with surveys. We have been adapting existing surveys for use in various undergraduate physics courses at two different institutions, including algebra-based introductory physics courses and physical science courses for pre-service elementary teachers. We describe our efforts to modify existing surveys for use across different courses and content areas and describe our initial findings concerning the depth and prevalence of TE. From survey data, large differences can be detected in both the depth of students' overall engagement and the degree to which that engagement falls off when students are not in the classroom or working on required assignments.

We analyze the discourse of faculty presenting derivations in which they manipulate mathematical equations to illuminate a physical principle. Observations are interpreted through a lens of symbolic forms, conceptual and contextual meanings that are embedded in the equation. When an equation is manipulated (e.g. bringing terms to one side or another), different forms are emphasized, changing the meaning of the equation. We argue that this framework can make explicit the faculty motivations for the moves, and present two observations of manipulations that appear to have distinctly different reasons. The first manipulation brings about a change in context from a physics to a mathematical frame. In the second, a thematic manipulation --- grouping all terms of a common variable --- reveals an important conceptual point about a driven harmonic oscillator. While there is direct evidence from the observed faculty to support the inference of motivation, in neither case is the reasoning made clear to the students. The study of discourse represents a new direction in which physics education researchers can study and inform the classroom.

Physics students, especially those in pedagogically reformed courses, are sometimes dissatisfied with the course structure. Expectancy violation (EV), which arises when students’ pedagogical expectations are not met, is a possible cause for this dissatisfaction. Previous research has identified instances of EV in reformed physics classes, but detailed investigations are needed to determine how EV relates to course satisfaction. In this pilot study, we paired a modified Pedagogical Expectancy Violation Assessment (PEVA) with a course satisfaction questionnaire to measure students’ perceived expectations, experiences, and satisfaction in three different physics courses: algebra-based SCALE-UP style at EKU (N=61), calculus-based lecture at UCF (N=179), and calculus-based SCALE-UP at UCF (N=88). Course satisfaction was positively correlated with performance and the number of positively-perceived EVs and negatively correlated with the number of negatively-perceived EVs. Students’ opinions about the frequency of a few particular activities predicted a large amount of the variability in course satisfaction. While inconclusive, these preliminary results guide reform efforts of the PEVA.

In our Introductory Physics for Life Scientists (IPLS) course at the University of Maryland, we are building interdisciplinary bridges that help students better understand thermodynamics. One aspect of this endeavor involves having students grapple with the physical processes underlying heuristic rules that they bring to our course from their biology and chemistry classes. In particular, we have implemented a series of activities and problems intended to unpack the hydrophobicity of oil, a key step in understanding the formation of cell membranes. The spontaneous separation of oil and water is predicted by the common rule of thumb, “like dissolves like,” but understanding where this comes from requires careful consideration of energetic and entropic effects. The rule must also be reconciled with the seemingly contradictory physical principle that opposite electric charges attract. This paper describes how holding up a heuristic that students have encountered in their biology and chemistry courses alongside physical principles can prompt students to look for interdisciplinary reconciliation among concepts that they previously did not even see as related. We view this as an important step toward a less fragmented experience for science students.

Several schools have implemented “Learning Assistant” (LA) programs, in which upper-class undergraduates serve as teaching assistants in introductory courses. At UNCG, LAs are given an unusual degree of freedom. Working in teams, they serve as the primary instructors for lab sections of the two introductory calculus-based physics courses. They co-design the lab curriculum with the professor of the lecture section, conduct all lab classes, and grade all student work. In order to investigate how students taking the lab reacted to having undergraduates as lab instructors, we gave and analyzed a short anonymous Likert-type survey probing students’ opinions at the end of the first course. We found that overall, most students reacted favorably. They found the LAs’ content knowledge and pedagogic skills to be adequate, and saw some benefit to having undergraduates rather than faculty to interact with. They also perceived that the responded to questions with guiding questions rather than authoritative answers.

Pedagogical content knowledge has been a useful construct for conceptualizing the knowledge-base that supports reform teaching practices. In physics education, we are still far from having established methods and instruments for assessing such knowledge. In an attempt to begin exploring possibilities for assessing instructor knowledge of student thinking, we asked a small sample of college physics instructors to take the Force Concept Inventory in two novel ways. Instructors were first asked to indicate the answer they think a typical novice student would choose prior to instruction and then to estimate the fraction of students answering correctly after instruction. We analyze how instructor responses compare with actual student data at our institution and discuss questions with significant mismatch-either ones that instructors overwhelming succeeded (or failed) at identifying student difficulties or questions where instructors were overwhelmingly pessimistic (or optimistic) about student performance. Implications for future work in this area of assessment are discussed.

PeerWise, an online tool that facilitates peer learning through student-generated content in the form of multiple-choice questions, was implemented in a large introductory university physics course. Interactions between students engaged in PeerWise were investigated using social network analysis. This showed that a dense and relatively equitable network was formed, giving students direct and easy access to the whole cohort through sharing and answering questions. A statistically significant correlation was found between students’ use of PeerWise and their performance in the end-of-course examination, even after taking into account their prior ability as measured by assessment prior to the start of the course. This suggests that students benefit from engaging with their peers, not only by sharing or answering a large number of questions but perhaps by being exposed to a wide range of question styles, levels, explanations and comments.

UNCG has an innovative Learning Assistant (LA) program, in which upper-class undergraduate physics majors teach laboratory sections of the introductory calculus-based physics sequence. The lecture section’s professor provides supervision and determines the overall learning objectives and structure of the labs, but the team of LAs develop the detailed lesson plans, write up all handouts and quizzes, conduct the lab sessions, and evaluate student work. This gives the LAs a genuine voice in planning and teaching, and increases the authenticity of the teaching experience. In order to investigate the impact of this teaching experience upon physics majors, we interviewed five current and former LAs. We analyzed the interview transcripts via emergent thematic analysis to identify the most prevalent impacts, and then viewed the results through the lens of professional identity development. We claim that the LA experience helps grow three aspects of physics majors’ professional identity: their sense of themselves as a physics teacher, as a physics student, and as a member of a community of practice.

This paper compares the effect on student understanding from using either real-world circuits or an interactive circuit simulation. Three groups of students who worked through a tutorial on multiple-loop circuits from Tutorials in Introductory Physics, one with real circuits and two with a simulation, were compared in terms of their conceptual understanding after instruction. Students who used the simulation completed the tutorial faster and had more time for discussion with the TAs, and generally scored higher on conceptual questions than did those who used real circuits.

After learning Newton’s 2nd Law, students in a university modeling-based introductory physics class are asked to imagine a box sliding across a floor and slowing to a stop. Although they've had extensive experience with friction in the context of energy, this is their first exposure to friction within the context of force. They are asked to make different representations for this scenario, including a system schema, and force diagram. During their small group work, students quickly run into a difficulty: there are only two interactions with the box (contact, gravitational), so there should only be two forces, yet the box is slowing, which means it must have unbalanced forces in the direction of acceleration. In this paper, preliminary evidence from a student-led whole-class discussion is presented showing how the group reasons through sharp disagreement in their initial ideas to come to a useful consensus.

Undergraduate teaching labs often include expectations for students to use various sensemaking and reasoning behaviours when conducting an experiment. These expectations, however, are often unsupported in the explicit lab structure, and, as such, students develop distinctions between behaviours associated with “doing a lab” or “doing science.” This study examines if and how students engage in reflection and evaluation of results during an experiment that involves two sources of systematic error. While many students reflected on their results and identified the source of the larger systematic error, very few did so for the smaller one. In fact, for the latter case, many students reported significantly inflated uncertainties, effectively hiding the systematic error altogether. We use these results, in-class observations, and post-lab interviews to describe how and why students failed to demonstrate authentic scientific inquiry behaviours during the lab.

The preparation of future learning (PFL) perspective posits that transfer can be measured by how effectively students can learn to solve new problems. This contrasts with the sequestered problem solving (SPS) perspective which focuses on whether students can solve new problems unaided. We developed a tutorial to facilitate students' understanding and application of mathematical differentiation in physics problems. One group of students utilized our tutorial, while a control group received a traditional lesson on the same topic. After instruction, each group completed a SPS transfer task. Following that they received computer-based hints to aid them on same transfer task. The extent to which students successfully used these hints assessed their PFL transfer. We found that students who completed the tutorial did not outperform the control group on the SPS task, but they did outperform them on the PFL transfer task.

The Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE) is a test that was originally developed in English to assess American students’ understanding of Newton’s laws of motion. The present study evaluates the Japanese translation of the FMCE (abbreviated as “FMCEJ”) using data consisting of the pretest results of 1095 Japanese students, most of whom were first-year students at a mid-level engineering school between 2003 and 2012 in Japan. The classical test theory indices of the FMCEJ indicate that its reliability and discrimination are adequate in assessing Japanese students’ views about force and motion. A comparison of these students’ understanding of the concepts of motion and force, as assessed with the FMCEJ, and that of American students, as assessed with the FMCE, indicates the validity of the FMCEJ.

This paper describes the analysis of video recordings of physics experts solving novel problems involving solar cells, which involved such advanced physics topics as complex circuits and semiconductors. By performing a fine grained analysis using a resource based model of cognition, we determined what resources experts use while reasoning in the current context and how they used them. By analyzing critical events in the problem solving process, we searched for meaningful patterns of resource activation to help gain insight into expert problem solving processes.

This is a continuation of a set of work investigating how students use mathematics when solving physics problems. This phase of the study specifically looked at qualitative data from in-depth group interviews to expand upon the more quantitative studies previously conducted. Specifically, but unsurprisingly, the results indicate that students tend to focus on the solution technique when examining math problems but heavily emphasize the context of the problem when examining physics problems. This is evident in a variety of tasks including grouping/matching exercises and oral discussions of the nature of the problems, and is true regardless of the purposeful prompting of students to consider the solution techniques required. Analysis from these interviews will be presented here, as well as some indication for future work to facilitate a more natural and useful incorporation of these disciplines for effective problem solving.

The PhET Interactive Simulations are well-known resources that originated in physics and are now used in multiple science disciplines. Many new educational innovations are developed but do not find a large audience—PhET, however, has been successful in becoming widely-used. This is the first of several planned case studies of widely-used educational innovations to characterize the strategies used by principle investigators (PIs) to promote widespread use of their innovation. We collected multiple sources of data, including interviews with the original developers, relevant publications, and documents released by the PhET team over the years. We analyzed the interview data and documents using a predetermined lens and constructed a narrative of key events and strategies. We found the PhET team refined and solidified the simulations after a period of pilot testing, and additional funding prompted new phases of propagation. With these results we refined our framework of successful propagation. The results of this work may help future PIs design a propagation plan for their innovation.

The Institute of Physics New Quantum Curriculum (quantumphysics.iop.org) consists of online texts and interactive simulations with accompanying activities for an introductory course in quantum mechanics starting from two-level systems. Observation sessions and analysis of homework and survey responses from in-class trials were used to optimize the simulations and activities in terms of clarity, ease-of-use, promoting exploration, sense-making and linking of multiple representations. This work led to revisions of simulations and activities and general design principles which have been incorporated wherever applicable. This article describes the optimization of one of the simulation controls and the refinement of activities to help students make direct connections between multiple representations.

As part of an international collaboration on educational dissemination, the Colorado School of Mines Physics Department is involved in the evaluation of a tertiary implementation of the Studio Physics environment at the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi, UAE. This paper will describe the preliminary results on student performance based on traditional means of summative assessment, the Force Concept Inventory, a Studio Learning Environment Survey, and semi-structured interview data with eight physics faculty and staff and eighteen current and former students regarding their opinions on introductory physics and the Studio environment and methodology. The discussion will also involve comparisons of different classroom cultures, context idiosyncrasies and their potential impact on the reform effort.

We describe the design and rationale for a project in which a room-sized mixed reality simulation was created to develop middle school students' knowledge and intuitions about how objects move in space. The simulation environment, called MEteor, uses laser-based motion tracking and both floor- and wall-projected imagery to encourage students to use their bodies to enact the trajectory of an asteroid as it travels in the vicinity of planets and their gravitational forces. By embedding students within an immersive simulation and offering novel perspectives on scientific phenomena, the intent is to engage learners in physics education at both an embodied and affective level. We describe a study showing improved attitudes towards science and feelings of engagement and learning for participants who used the whole-body MEteor simulation compared to a desktop computer version of the same simulation. We also discuss general implications for the design of technology-enhanced physics education environments.

While developing a standardized fluids assessment covering buoyancy and pressure, we discovered deficiencies in student understanding of density. In particular, many college students do not recognize that density is a fixed property of a solid substance, such as aluminum or gold. We added questions to our diagnostic exam to probe the extent of student difficulties. In one of our questions, only 50-60% of students (depending upon class) recognize that the density of gold is a fixed value. When similar questions from an existing diagnostic1 are used, however, 88-100% of students correctly identify the density of a piece of wood and of a diamond as fixed values. In this paper we discuss the differences between these questions and how those differences affect student responses.
1Yeend’s Density Survey.

Novice teachers in Seattle Pacific University’s (SPU’s) Learning Assistant (LA) Program shifted their views of student thinking over the course of two academic quarters. LAs originally valued student ideas as (1) a part of caring for students as whole people and (2) instrumental for diagnosing misunderstandings. As the second quarter of the course proceeded, LAs highlighted the intellectual value of student thinking, treating student ideas as sensible and productive. This paper proposes plausible mechanisms that foster this expanded view. In particular, we suggest that articulating teaching values that prioritize student reasoning, searching for "kernels of correctness" in student thinking, and negotiating curricular knowledge promote this particular attention towards student ideas.

Among the canonical physics core courses taken by most undergraduate majors is a course in mathematical methods. Physics education research has begun to explore upper division physics courses, as well as the use of mathematics throughout the physics curriculum. The math methods course is an especially opportune environment to study the development of conceptual understanding of key ideas in mathematics and physics as well as the development of broadly applicable skills and the sociocultural norms of physics. In this poster we will explore some of what happened in a particular math methods course, with attention to the development of student content understanding as well as the development of community norms.

Using factor analysis we investigated the desired career outcomes of a large sample of college students. From fifteen original items, we extracted eight factors covering over 50% of the total variance. Some of these factors were associated with gender and/or intended career field. The “communal values” factor is positively associated with the female gender and a life sciences career interest, and negatively associated with an engineering career interest. Furthermore, the “innovator” factor is associated with the male gender and an interest in physical sciences and engineering careers. Another factor strongly associated with male gender is “career as means to social recognition.” These results are in line with existing research pointing to different goals for males and females when choosing careers: Females are more oriented toward communal behavior and a connection with real life, whereas males are more attracted by social recognition and power.

We describe the development of a ten-question diagnostic designed to characterize the estimation skills of undergraduate students in science and engineering. In order to establish a baseline and look for possible gains in skill level we have developed a multiple-choice assessment designed to probe student ability and confidence in estimating physical quantities such as mass, size, and time. The diagnostic was administered as a pre-test and post-test to a class of first-year engineers and given to a set of experts to establish its discriminatory power. Item response curves were then used to evaluate each question and multiple-choice answers. The results show that the assessment has the resolution to distinguish between student and expert scores, and that the distribution of expert confidences is qualitatively different than the students in both pre-test and post-test.

This study investigates differences in problem-solving performance between three different introductory physics course formats at Florida International University. The course formats—lecture+laboratory (LL), inquiry-based (IQB), and lecture+laboratory+recitation (LLR)—all incorporated two Advanced Placement (AP) questions into their final exams. Students’ written responses were evaluated via an AP scoring rubric, and during this scoring, we observed marked differences in solution behavior between the three course formats. To further investigate these differences, we used the framework of epistemic games to analyze student responses. To apply this framework to written work, an epistemic game rubric was created. Application of this rubric yielded game profiles for each of the course formats, allowing us to highlight and compare course characteristics. These profiles of epistemic game distributions were then examined via chi-squared tests to quantify differences in the tools and strategies students used in their solutions.

Quantum mechanics is challenging even for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. In the Schrödinger representation, the wave function evolves in time according to the time dependent Schrödinger equation. The time dependence of the wave function gives rise to time dependence of the expectation value of observables. We have been exploring the difficulties that advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with time dependence of expectation values in quantum mechanics. We have developed and administered conceptual free response and multiple-choice questions to students to investigate these difficulties. We also interviewed 23 students individually using a think-aloud protocol to obtain a better understanding of the rationale behind students’ written responses. We find that many students struggle with time dependence of expectation values of observables. We discuss some findings.

In a previous study, I allowed introductory physics students to create a notecard (or sheet) for their midterm and final exams in an attempt to remove equation memorizing as a focus of the course. I hoped to use the study of these cards as an epistemological lens that would uncover their perceptions and attitudes about the course. Without follow-up questions, though, epistemology remained unclear. I have continued this line of research by adding anonymous survey questions that probe why students chose to include what they did, how (if at all) the notes were helpful, and how their card preparation changed throughout the semester. Through my analysis, I found cases where the survey questions reveal epistemological insight about students the note sheets alone would not. For example, one student with an equation-centered note sheet did not see equations as the most central course component, but he considered himself fluent enough in concepts that he felt he could leave conceptual statements out. I also discuss some of the more thoughtful survey answers I received, some future study possibilities, and efforts to discuss exam preparation in the classroom.

Students in introductory physics courses sometimes struggle to correctly break down a single vector into its components when provided only with an arrow, a magnitude, a reference angle, and a coordinate system. Students struggle further when asked to break down a vector in an inclined coordinate system, such as the weight vector of a box on an inclined plane. Varying the placement of the angle consistently affects student error and response patterns across four physics student populations: algebra-based mechanics, algebra-based E&M, calculus-based mechanics, and calculus-based E&M. This suggests that student difficulties with trigonometric vector components are persistent and pervasive, even across different introductory physics courses, and are far below the requisite near-perfect accuracy needed for such fundamental skills. Student error and response patterns are discussed for both problem types.

Kinetic Theory and Bernoulli’s Principle are fundamental concepts life science students can use to explain a variety of important biological phenomena. Based on paired student interviews we established that many UNE students had no molecular models to describe fluid behavior, and what models students did have were typically flawed. We developed simple experimental activities and questions to help pinpoint student preconceptions regarding ideal gas behavior and a fluid dynamics concept relating to Bernoulli's Principle. Students were asked to use multiple representations (diagrams, graphs, math and verbal descriptions) to explain these experiments. Our research suggested that understanding Bernoulli's Principle was helped by having a conceptual understanding of kinetic theory, in particular equating pressure with particle collisions. Based on these results a multi-representational "modeling centered" ideal gas law lab, using semi-quantitative diagrammatic tools, was created. We tested the lab on our spring 2013 general physics students in order to investigate the impact of the improved models on Bernoulli's Principle comprehension. The same students were post-tested on a new set of similar ideal gas and fluids dynamics problems with the results indicating substantial improved gains in answering fluids statics questions and modest gains on Bernoulli Principle questions.

Students who serve as Learning Assistants (LAs) and have the opportunity to teach the content they are learning, while also studying effective teaching pedagogy, have demonstrated achievement gains in advanced content courses and positive shifts in attitudes about learning science [V. Otero, S. Pollock & N. Finkelstein, Amer J Physics 78, 11 (2010)]. Although the LA experience is also valuable for high school students, the tight schedule and credit requirements of advanced high school students limit opportunities for implementing traditional LA programs at the high school level. In order to provide high school physics students with an LA-like experience, iPads were used as tools for students to synthesize "screencast" video tutorials for students to access, review and evaluate. The iPads were utilized in a 1:1 tablet:student environment throughout the course of an entire school year. This research investigates the impact of a 1:1 iPad environment and the use of iPads to create “teaching-to-learn” (TtL) experiences on student agency and attitudes toward learning science. Project funded by NSF grant # DUE 934921.

Drawing on the NAS/NRC goals of identity and engagement, we construct a framework for promoting scientific identity through field trips and lab tours. Design of lab tours for the Partnerships for Informal Science Education in the Community (PISEC) program is presented as an example of applying this framework. We evaluate the success of PISEC’s redesigned field trips and lab tours based on observations and analysis of students’ questions during lab tours. Students’ dialogue during lab tours seeks to know what scientists do and who scientists are, aligning with our goals and with the identity framework.

Recent research suggests that many students complete an undergraduate course on quantum mechanics without having developed a solid understanding of some important fundamental concepts. We are probing the ability of students to apply foundational ideas in quantum mechanics in a variety of contexts, including the complex problem of time-dependent perturbation theory. Based on student responses to lecture post-tests, tutorial pretests and post-tests, as well as individual student interviews, we are identifying persistent difficulties that students have in applying basic ideas about energy measurements and the time evolution of both energy eigenstates and superpositions of energy eigenstates. The results are guiding the creation and revision of tutorials on topics students typically encounter in the second half of their undergraduate instruction on quantum mechanics.

For solving problems, especially ill-structured ones, a solver must employ metacognitive strategies including self-monitoring to be successful. Solvers who frequently examine their thinking are able to assess their progress, consider alternatives and evaluate their own work. In an introductory mechanics course, students were given class assignments where they were asked to record problem solutions using a think-aloud protocol. These solutions were recorded using Livescribe smartpens, which record and synchronize pen strokes and audio. To better understand the self-monitoring process, as well as improve future versions of the class activities, we examined the recorded think alouds after the courses and thus far have identified three categories of self-monitoring.

I argue for empowering education, adapting Marx’s idea of ownership of the means of production, and discuss interactive simulations as one example of a tool in which intentional design can support student ownership of learning. I propose a model that leverages affordances of educational tools to do positive work toward empowering education.

Drawing from earlier work of Gee, Carlone, Johnson, and Shanahan, we developed a framework for “good physics student role identity” or, more simply, “physics identity” which is a reliable proxy for students’ affinity towards physics and is predictive of students’ physics-related career choices. This framework was postulated to be comprised of performance beliefs, competence beliefs, recognition beliefs, and interest. Subsequent investigations showed that performance and competence beliefs are not distinct and the combined performance/competence construct is somewhat akin to Bandura’s self-efficacy. Recent work has extended this framework to mathematics and engineering. We conclude with a brief discussion of the future of the framework for understanding “best practices” in STEM classrooms.

We report on the development and evaluation of Learning Physics (LEP), a new curriculum adapted from Physics and Everyday Thinking (PET). PET is an inquiry-based, hands-on, conceptual physics curriculum that was developed for small enrollment discussion/lab settings. The Learning Physics (LEP) curriculum maintains the same research-based learning principles as PET but is suitable for classes taught in a larger lecture hall setting. LEP incorporates both videos of experiments and hands-on activities that students can perform on small desks typical of lecture settings. LEP also incorporates assignments where students submit written work and evaluate each other using a web-based system. This paper describes the curriculum, and presents LEP students' content performance and views about science. Outcomes are compared to students in courses using PET.

Massive Open Online Courses are an exciting new avenue for instruction and research, yet they are full of unknowns. In the Spring of 2013, MITx released its first introductory physics MOOC through the edX platform, generating a total enrollment of 43,000 students from around the world. We describe the population of participants in terms of their age, gender, level of education, and country of origin, highlighting both the diversity of 8.02x enrollees as well as gender gap and retention. Using three midterm exams and the final as waypoints, we highlight performance by different demographic subpopulations and their retention rates. Our work is generally aimed at making a bridge between available MOOC data and topics associated with the Physics Education Research community.

Studies have shown that embedding scientific argumentation in problem solving can enhance problem solving skills. However, research has also indicated that students have difficulties constructing arguments without appropriate scaffolds. We investigated the use of argumentation scaffolds on students’ argumentation quality, conceptual quality, and solution strategies on conceptual problems in an introductory physics class. In this mixed method study we compared students’ performance in two guided conditions – constructing an argument and evaluating two arguments – as well as one control condition. Our results indicate that the use of guiding prompts improves the argumentation and conceptual quality of students’ solutions. Further, students in the guided conditions tended to use a wider variety of problem solving strategies than in the control condition. We discuss the implications of these results on the use of argumentation prompts on conceptual problems in introductory physics.

We reformed a course for future elementary teachers to infuse pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) into the fabric of a physics course. The modified course is structured around an instructional model called the pedagogical learning bicycle (PLB) that intertwines the construction of content knowledge (CK) with pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) using metacognitive reflection as a bridge between learning content and pedagogy. To assess the impact of the course experiences on their PCK, the future teachers were asked to work in groups to create lesson plans that incorporated their understanding of elementary children’s ideas of science and strategies to address these ideas. As a measure of PCK, we scored the lesson plans on the ways in which the students incorporated these ideas in their lesson. We describe the results of our study and discuss its implications for instruction.

Attending and responding to the substance of students’ scientific thinking is an important aspect of reform-oriented science teaching. Explanations of why teachers do or do not focus on student thinking have largely centered on elements of teachers’ cognition, such as whether teachers have the skills required to engage in this sort of teaching or conceptualize their teaching in conducive ways. In this paper, I analyze two classroom episodes in which teachers’ in-the-moment affective experiences seemed to play a role in sustaining their attention and responsiveness to student thinking. I explore the nature and role(s) of the teacher’s affect in each case, concluding with a call for continued work along these lines as we seek to understand more about what influences teachers’ attention and responsiveness to students’ ideas.

Research has demonstrated that attentional cues overlaid on diagrams and animations can help students attend to the relevant areas and facilitate problem solving. In this study we investigate the influence of visual cues and correctness feedback on students’ reasoning as they solve conceptual physics problems containing a diagram. The participants (N=90) were enrolled in an algebra-based physics course and were individually interviewed. During each interview students solved four problem sets each containing an initial problem, six isomorphic training problems, and a transfer problem. The cued conditions saw visual cues on the training problems, and the feedback conditions were told if their responses (answer and explanation) were correct or incorrect. We found that visual cues and correctness feedback significantly improves students’ abilities to solve the training and transfer problems.

Designing useful computer coaches for problem-solving in introductory physics requires an iterative process to develop both the software framework and content of the coaches. Research is necessary to determine which students use the coaches, how those students use the coaches, and whether the coaches are effective for those students. We report results of a study of prototype coaches to determine the user characteristics and usage characteristics. We also discuss how this data will guide the next iteration of these coaches.

We describe a physics teacher's successful pedagogical changes, which were based on the teacher’s attempts to match the physics learning environment with her students’ learning preferences. The pedagogical changes were observed during the teacher’s implementation of the Cogenerative Mediation Process for Learning Environments (CMPLE). CMPLE is a formative intervention designed to help students and instructors collaborate to improve their classroom environment through a combination of cogenerative dialogues and time allotted to work towards their collective goals. The teacher’s change in pedagogy resulted from her students' involvement in reforming their classroom. For this instrumental case study, we examined a veteran high school teacher's semester-long use of CMPLE in her Modeling Instruction classroom. Analysis of classroom videos and teacher interviews indicates that the teacher used CMPLE to adapt her pedagogy in complex ways, in order to balance her past experience and teaching values with her students’ desires to be taught in ways seemingly counter to her then-current methods. We will trace her teaching practices and her self-described awareness of her students’ prior experiences, to highlight notable changes concerning a particular cogenerative goal.

As part of an ongoing investigation of students’ learning in upper-division quantum mechanics, we needed a high-quality conceptual assessment instrument for comparing outcomes of different curricular approaches. The 14 item open-ended Quantum Mechanics Assessment Tool (QMAT) was previously developed for this purpose. However, open-ended tests require complex scoring rubrics, are difficult to score consistently, and demand substantial investment of faculty time to grade. Here, we present the process of converting open-ended questions to multiple-choice (MC) format. We highlight the construction of effective distractors and the use of student interviews to revise and validate questions and distractors. We examine other elements of the process, including results of a preliminary implementation of the MC assessment given at Cal Poly Pomona and CU Boulder. This test will likely go through more iterations and further statistical analyses of reliability and validity are pending upon collection of additional.

“Content knowledge for teaching” is the specialized content knowledge that teachers use in practice – the content knowledge that serves them for tasks of teaching such as making sense of students’ ideas, anticipating conceptual challenges students will face, selecting instructional tasks, and assessing student work. We examine a middle-school physical science teacher’s interactions with a group of students for evidence of content knowledge for teaching energy (CKT-E). Our aims are to develop our theory of CKT-E as well as criteria for its observational assessment. We identify CKT-E as potentially including elements of canonical energy models, elements of alternative energy models, and a repertoire of instructional tasks or activities that exemplify or support instructional goals.

We explain the appropriate use of pipe cleaners to represent quantum wave functions in terms of material anchors. We then analyze the actions of one undergraduate quantum mechanics student in an oral exam situation with two related tasks, both involving the visualization of a 3-d structure to represent the real and imaginary parts of the wave function on one spatial coordinate. Instruction before the exam included several in-class activities involving building 3-d representations of wave functions for several potentials using pipe cleaners. Though the oral exam did not specify that students should or should not use pipe cleaners, the student in this analysis brought and used them successfully during the exam. Analysis of the students’ use of this tool shows promise of benefit to future students in a more highly structured environment of instruction and assessment.

One goal of education is to help students become well-rounded citizens who can think broadly across boundaries. In addition, individuals with interdisciplinary thinking skills can be valuable contributors to modern research challenges by understanding and recognizing interdisciplinary connections and working in diverse teams. However, little research exists on the connection between interdisciplinary thinking and physics education. What aspects of physics classroom practices and experiences foster interdisciplinary thinking? What effect does interdisciplinary thinking have on the development of students’ physics identities? Using a physics identity theoretical framework with data from a national survey, this study found that self-reported characteristics of interdisciplinary thinking are significantly correlated with higher levels of physics identity development. Also, several factors of the physics classroom environment and pedagogies are significantly related to interdisciplinary thinking.

Course structure - the types and frequency of learning activities - impacts how students interact with electronic textbooks. We analyze student-tracking logs generated by the LON-CAPA learning management system from nearly a decade of blended large-lecture introductory-physics courses at Michigan State University, as well as one on-campus course from MIT. Data mining provides estimates of the overall amount and temporal regularity of eText use, i.e., weekly reading versus review immediately before exams. For all courses studied, we compare student use of eTexts as it varies with course structure, e.g., from traditional (three or four exams, eText assigned as supplementary) to reformed (frequent exams, embedded assessment in the assigned eText). Traditional format courses are accompanied by little eText use, while high reading levels persist throughout reformed courses.

The Energy Project is a research effort aimed at increasing learner engagement with energy concepts in K-12 classrooms. We work closely with elementary and secondary science teachers, offering professional development opportunities in which teachers use energy tracking strategies to make sense of energy conservation in a wide range of complex physical phenomena. We value the construction and refinement of flexible, rigorous and intuitive energy models which will empower learners to make sense of phenomena and resources that they care about in the real world. Therefore, both in instruction and assessment we prioritize energy reasoning strategies over static lists of energy facts or correct explanations. In this paper we share preliminary evidence of significant shifts in teacher's constructive use of diagrams and rigorous attention to energy tracking when confronted with a novel energy scenario. We believe that this study has methodological implications for future research on shifts in energy understanding.

Research has shown that students struggle to understand the use of partial derivatives in thermodynamics. We have designed an apparatus, which we have called a Partial Derivative Machine, that serves as a mechanical analogue of a thermodynamic system. Using this device, students have a tangible way to wrestle with issues related to partial derivatives and thermodynamics, such as which variables are held fixed, how many variables are independent, and how energy can be added to a system. In this paper, we present a description of the apparatus, an introduction to the associated activities, and an overview of how this apparatus can be connected to thermodynamic systems.

Quantum mechanics is challenging even for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Dirac notation is a convenient notation used extensively in quantum mechanics. We have been investigating the difficulties that the advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with Dirac notation. We administered written free response and multiple-choice questions to students and also conducted semi-structured individual interviews with 23 students using a think-aloud protocol to obtain a better understanding of the rationale behind their responses. We find that many students struggle with Dirac notation and they are not consistent in using this notation across various questions in a given test. In particular, whether they answer questions involving Dirac notation correctly or not is context dependent.

English Language Learners (ELLs) are frequently left on the periphery of classroom interactions. Due to misalignment of language skills, teachers and peers communicate with these students less often, decreasing the number of opportunities to engage. Exclusion can be avoided with learning activities that invite all students to participate and contribute ideas. We argue that environments and activities that privilege scientific inductive reasoning increase possibilities for emerging bilingual students to engage. This study investigated first-grade students' discussions about factors that affect how objects float. Students came from a variety of language backgrounds; all were considered beginner/intermediate ELLs. Results show that the goal of inducing principles from actual phenomena encouraged students to communicate their ideas and reasoning, boosting students' confidence in expressing themselves. Following the hybrid space argument of Vygotsky's theory of concept formation, we illustrate that physics can be particularly suitable context for the co-development of concepts and English language skills.

During a sequence of interventions including a tutorial and a teaching interview, a student (“Bryce”) showed evidence of understanding all the steps of Riemann-sum style reasoning about why displacement corresponds to the area under a velocity vs. time graph, which in turn corresponds to the integral of velocity over time. However, he does not view this reasoning as productive for explaining to someone why displacement corresponds to that area under the velocity vs. time curve. We argue that his view stems not primarily from conceptual or mathematical difficulties but from his epistemological stance toward learning integration. Although Bryce tries to mesh physical/conceptual reasoning and other pieces of mathematical formalism (such as simple equations), he views integration as something to be accepted and used. He therefore frames the Riemann sum reasoning as unneeded logical stepping stones rather than as a deeper explanation linking mathematical formalism to intuitive physical ideas.

Our research group is developing a standardized fluids assessment, covering buoyancy and pressure. Understanding buoyancy requires a battery of skills and knowledge, and we have designed questions to probe understanding of background concepts such as density, incompressibility, and volume of fluid displaced. In this paper we will describe some of the buoyancy-related assessment questions, the misconceptions they probe, and the preliminary results from the beta version of the assessment.

We examined the effects of simple training tasks on student responses to questions about the relationship between the directions of net force, velocity, and acceleration. Six training conditions were constructed, including a 2x2 design (abstract vs. concrete contexts) x (force-velocity training vs. acceleration-velocity training), a force-acceleration training condition, and a control (no training) condition. We found that the force-velocity and acceleration-velocity training significantly improved scores on both of these question types, but acceleration-velocity showed larger gains on the untrained question type, which is inconsistent with some interpretations of hierarchies of student understanding of force and motion found in previous works. This result implies that some students are learning the multiple relations between the variables that are typically learned in the course of standard instruction, while other students may be "gaming" the simple training tasks and not learning those relations between variables.

The Colorado Upper-division Electrostatics (CUE) diagnostic was designed as an open-ended assessment in order to capture elements of student reasoning in upper-division electrostatics. The diagnostic has been given for many semesters at several universities resulting in an extensive database of CUE responses. To increase the utility and scalability of the assessment, we used this database along with research on students’ difficulties to create a multiple-choice version. The new version explores the viability of a novel test format where students select multiple responses and can receive partial credit based on the accuracy and consistency of their selections. This format was selected with the goal of preserving insights afforded by the open-ended format while exploiting the logistical advantages of a multiple-choice assessment. Here, we present examples of the questions and scoring of the multiple-choice CUE as well as initial analysis of the test’s validity, item difficulty, discrimination, and overall consistency with the open-ended version.

Inquiry activities can provide students with the chance to experiment and to externalize their reasoning. To examine the impacts of level of guidance in inquiry-based activities on students’ mechanistic reasoning, we analyze middle school students’ scientific notebooks from an afterschool program by applying a coding scheme that is modified from Russ (Russ, R. et al.. (2008). Sci. Ed., 92: 499–525.). We compare students’ mechanistic reasoning in two inquiry physics curricula, one that is guided and another that is more open-ended inquiry. We find that students exhibit more types and more overall mechanistic reasoning in the open curriculum. We also code the curricula and find that students have more opportunities to practice mechanistic reasoning in the open-ended curriculum. We examine why students take the opportunities provided to them in both curricula and the implications for both informal and formal curriculum design.

For introductory life science students, fluid dynamics is a topic of great relevance, yet difficult to understand conceptually. This pilot study focuses on implementing and assessing curricular interventions to help students understand pressure, vacuums, and pressure gradients. Our pedagogical strategy was to focus on mechanistic reasoning and a multiple-scale view of fluids. Student learning was assessed through open-ended conceptual questions administered before and after instruction. Initial results show that significant gains were achieved.

The methodology of using two isomorphic (same form) problems focuses on detecting differences in students’ performances when solving one of the problems. In this article we present a methodology that not only focuses on that, but also analyzes the effect on performance when students have previously done the associated problem, as well as the way students’ answers change (“answer changing”) when doing both problems, and the effect of problem order on answer changing. We administered isomorphic tests with vector problems to 330 students finishing a mechanics course. We used two sets of problems: negative scalar multiplication (no-context and velocity context) and dot product interpretation (no-context and work context). In the first set, we detected a significant effect produced by the order in which students answered the problems. In the second set, we found that a great proportion of students answered the first work context problem correctly, but incorrectly answered the second no-context problem. This article presents the methodology so it can be used by other researchers.

The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS) was developed as a broadly applicable assessment tool for undergraduate physics lab courses. At the beginning and end of the semester, the E-CLASS assesses students’ views about their strategies, habits of mind, and attitudes when doing experiments in lab classes. Students also reflect on how those same strategies, habits-of-mind, and attitudes are practiced by professional researchers. Finally, at the end of the semester, students reflect on how their own course valued those practices in terms of earning a good grade. In response to frequent calls to transform laboratory curricula to more closely align it with the skills and abilities needed for professional research, the E-CLASS is a tool to assess students’ perceptions of the gap between classroom laboratory instruction and professional research. The E-CLASS has been validated and administered in all levels of undergraduate physics classes. To aid in its use as a formative assessment tool, E-CLASS provides all participating instructors with a detailed feedback report. Example figures and analysis from the report are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the E-CLASS. The E-CLASS is actively administered through an online interface and all interested instructors are invited to administer the E-CLASS their own classes and will be provided with a summary of results at the end of the semester.

While introductory electricity and magnetism (E&M) has been investigated for decades, research at the upper-division is relatively new. The University of Colorado has developed the Colorado Upper-Division Electrostatics (CUE) Diagnostic to test students’ understanding of the content of the first semester of an upper-division E&M course. While the questions on the CUE cover many learning goals in an appropriate manner, we believe the rubric for the CUE is particularly aligned to the topics and methods of teaching at the University of Colorado. We suggest that changes to the rubric would allow for better assessment of a wider range of teaching schemes. As an example, we highlight one problem from the CUE involving the superposition principle. Using data from both Oregon State University and the University of Colorado, we discuss the limitations of the current rubric, compare results using a different analysis scheme, and discuss the implications for assessing students’ understanding.